Bill Easterly and the Culture of Nice

I was really excited to see that William Easterly has a blog now. And it’s not because I am a big fan of the man. I think many of his conclusions are just plain wrong, and he’s prone to ugly sweeping generalizations. He seems to assume from the get-go that other people are stupid and/or thoughtless. But he’s brilliant, and he’s not at all nice.

Development and aid work is mired in a culture of nice, and that culture keeps bad work from being eliminated and good work from getting better. We’re too nice to call a bad project a bad project. When we criticize, we criticize in abstractions. No one has any problem identifying bad products as bad – Vista, for example – but no one will ever call a bad program bad. If you look at my post on NGOs that do harm, you’ll only see anonymous comments about unnamed projects. We’re addicted to nice.

The charitable reason for this behavior is human decency. When good people are making a good faith effort to do work that matters, you feel like the worst kind of jerk calling them out for waste or incompetence. And every project benefits one or two people. Nobody wants to be the one to say that those one or two people were not worth the effort.

But there are a couple of people who like Vista, too. That doesn’t keep the rest of us from explaining exactly what’s wrong with it. After human decency, however, comes self-interest.

We change jobs a lot in this field. Project funding runs out, and you have to find your next gig, or your next donor. Most of us have worked for three or four different NGOs or companies, and perhaps a government agency. You don’t want to talk smack about a potential employer, and a potential employer could be just about anyone. And, of course, a potential employer doesn’t want an employee who criticized his last boss in public. So we all shut up, and organizations that everyone knows are sinkholes of mismanagement and despair just keep on getting grants and contracts.

I don’t really know how to fix this. I am not ready to tell you here on the world-wide-webs exactly which of my former employers sucked because I too would like to continue getting jobs. I started my “things I don’t believe in” series as one way to address the bad work no one wants to talk about, but I think it is still the kind of generality that doesn’t do enough good.

I’m trying to teach myself about development (which is I follow your blog) and Easterly is someone who I’ve found interesting, I’ve read “White man’s burden” and am ploughing through “Elusive Quest for Growth” at the moment. I’d love to hear your criticism of his ideas. (I’d also like the address of his blog but will probably find that myself).

Interesting comments on accountability/whistle blowing. Should there be some mechanaism for development workers to anonymously flag problems or perhaps some other mechanism for NGOs to be held to account?

Thanks for this post! I’ve noticed the same thing in plain old domestic nonprofits. I thought it was just me being a New Yorker in Minnesota. There’s a huge push toward “accountability” to try to get out of the conundrum of nice, but I’ve noticed we seem to end up wasting a lot of time on meaningless or misleading metrics. At least it’s a start?

As a college graduate I’ve had very little experience compared to others, but I know exactly what you’re talking about. The only potential solution I have is for the donors to start a pool of funding devoted solely for evaluation, and channel it to organizations like IPA and J-PAL (that are exemplary in the field). That way we don’t risk running out of fund for evaluation and the evaluators don’t have to fear losing jobs. Eventually when evaluation becomes more of a common practice organizations that don’t evaluate rigorously will just get less and less funding.

Tim – sorry for the oversight. I assume you’ve googled it by now. I think some kind of anonymous mechanism would be great. There would be the risk of people just hanging around bitching, but someone savvy ought to be able to sift through.

n.e.r.i – TI think nice affects metrics, too, because you can have great indicators that don’t evaluate what matters.

1. One problem with criticism is that programs vary so much from country to country, especially in organisations that are either decentralised or loosely coupled. So criticising an organisation doesn’t make much sense; criticising a program does. Problem is that organisations see criticisms of the part as criticisms of the whole.

2. The solution is that professionals in the aid industry have to stop working for organisations that they think suck. There’ll be an endless supply of recent graduates but if improving the sector is part of our goal, then why don’t people act on their knowledge?

Paul – both excellent points. I myself have worked for two terrible organizations, and I have resolved I will never do so again. I have actually had it mentioned to me that I ask an awful lot of questions at job interviews.

Like many thinks, it is essentially a question of accountability. In a perfect world (may I say, free market?) programmes – or organisations – doing a lousy job would not be able to receive funding. Donors should be able to assess the results of the organisation they are contributing to. While this may not be the case for individual donors – people sending $10 on Paypal to Amnesty or someone giving a euro to a Save the Children volunteer (neither org I have anything against, I will hasten to add, they’re just examples) cannot be bothered to read an annual report.But institutional donors – bigger orgs, philanthropies – and governments/intergovernmental organisations – should establish guidelines and have a serious assessment.

One of the reasons I left the UN was the overpowering universal spirit of niceness, as I call it. Lazy, useless staff, whose asses were moulded to their chairs, but who you couldn’t criticise. Poor practice that went overlooked. Human rights abuses that got covered up because they involved UN staff. I couldn’t stand it; I complained and wrote letters, and won a few enemies, but there was no change. Pity, because I love the UN and what it stands for.

One of the reasons I left the UN was the overpowering universal spirit of niceness, as I call it. Lazy, useless staff, whose asses were moulded to their chairs, but who you couldn’t criticise. Poor practice that went overlooked. Human rights abuses that got covered up because they involved UN staff. I couldn’t stand it; I complained and wrote letters, and won a few enemies, but there was no change. Pity, because I love the UN and what it stands for.

[…] by by Alanna Shaikh. She shares a lot of seemingly cynical but actually dead-on observations like how the work of NGO’s is impeded by a culture of “being nice”, why you shouldn’t even bother starting an NGO and if you choose to anyway, how to succeed. […]

Big Fat Important Disclaimer

NOTHING I SAY ON THIS BLOG REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OF USAID OR THE US GOVERNMENT. Everything written here is purely my personal opinion. The contents of this blog are the responsibility of me, Alanna Shaikh, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of USAID or the U.S. Government.

BIG FAT Important Disclaimer

NOTHING I SAY ON THIS BLOG REPRESENTS THE VIEWS OF USAID OR THE US GOVERNMENT. Everything written here is purely my personal opinion. The contents of this blog are the responsibility of me, Alanna Shaikh, and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of USAID or the U.S. Government.